ALARM 2019

I wouldn't say it's a tradition, but I have kept an eye on the annual Asphalt Industry Alliance Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey (ALARM).

For those who have missed the survey before, it's a survey of local authorities in England and Wales which seeks to quantify the current state of the carriageways of local roads and so excludes footways, bridges and lighting. Last year was encouraging as the maintenance backlog had reduced from £12bn to £9bn, although it was a mixed picture. This year, it's still a mixed picture with the backlog sitting at £10bn.

As ever, we have the key headlines in a graphic (above). Against the continuing backdrop of the motorway network expansion and other strategic (and so not local authority roads), the two-tier funding approach continues where we build and maintain large roads from national budgets and with local roads being funded through a mix of council tax and bidding for central funding pots.

Interestingly, the funding mix for England (excluding London) has remained the same as last year with Wales getting a little more central funding. London, however, has seen a huge drop in central funding and this will be a direct result of the Government removing Transport for London's revenue support of £700m a year. 

The proportion of funding spent on reactive maintenance is also interesting. Now, I am not entirely sure where the ideal 16% comes from (it is generated by the ICE and CIHT), but in theory, preventative maintenance is more cost-efficient than reactive maintenance and so a high proportion of reactive maintenance is an indication of underlying problems as reactive work rarely deals with the root cause of failure. Wales seems to be doing well, England is going the wrong way and London has maintained its high level of reactive maintenance.

Structural condition is improving in England and Wales, although it's worth keeping an eye on the 'poor' roads with less than 5 years remaining because they'll end up sucking in money from a structural point of view. The roads are deteriorating in London, although it is a complex picture and my feeling is the 'poor' roads are going to be local streets rather than the TfL network and borough 'A' roads.

The ALARM survey can only be a snapshot, but it shows that the highway maintenance backlog is remains stubbornly high. Throw in the £6.7bn backlog for bridge maintenance and the continued cuts to local government which tends to hit highway maintenance hard, the ride ahead remains bumpy.

Controlling Parking Over An Area

I suppose this is a bit of a recap this week as I have covered parking control before, but I am currently doing some research for another design guide and I though it might be helpful to group some techniques together in one place.

One of the irritating things about UK parking management is that the underlying (general) position is that people can park where they like unless otherwise indicated which means we have to go through a legal process and spend money to establish control. Of course, there are some exclusions to my sweeping generalisation, but it doesn't matter for this post.

Specifically, I'm interested in controlled parking over an area rather than any 'spot' treatments and so we have three main ways to achieve this;

• Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs)
• Restricted Parking Zones (RPZs)
• Permit Parking Areas (PPAs)

Each type of scheme is required to have traffic orders in place to be enforceable and in establishing traffic orders, a level of consultation is required which includes the UK quirk of us only having to consider written objections (and that's another debate).

Controlled Parking Zone

The CPZ is probably the most well-known area parking management approaches. At its core, we have a system whereby drivers are informed about the controls by large traffic signs as they drive into an area and these controls are reinforced by yellow lines (known as 'waiting restrictions') which prohibit parking during the operation times and signed parking bays which allow parking, depending on who has been given priority.

Zone 'entry' sign 

Zone 'exit' sign

Each motor traffic entry and exit point requires the appropriate signs (as above). The entry sign will generally have the time of operation in the panel at the bottom (which should reflect the operational of the bays and yellow lines); a lack of panel means the CPZ is in continuous operation. 

There are variations on the "Controlled" aspect which can be changed to "Pay and Display" and other items and loading can also be banned within the zone. Section 14 of Chapter 3 of the Traffic Signs Manual gives some of the more detailed advice.

It is possible to have yellow lines with different times of operation, but this then rather makes a CPZ pointless as they would have to be signed (apart from double yellow lines which don't need to be signed) and lots of waiting restriction time plates are needed which adds clutter. It is also possible to have bays operating at different times the the CPZ and because each bay has to be signed anyway, it doesn't make any real difference to the clutter.

Bay within a CPZ - this variant is for resident permit holders.

However, in my view, it is far easier for people to understand if the zone, waiting restrictions and bays all operate at the same time with items such as double yellow lines, bus stop clearways and specific controls being included. Less complication is always better and people will be able to understand what is expected of them more readily.

Restricted Parking Zone

It is usual to see RPZs used in town centres rather than residential areas (although they can be used anywhere) and this is because they were originally designed for historic centres where it was felt that yellow lines would be unsightly or where materials (just as cobbles) don't take paint very well.

RPZ entry sign with no waiting allowed unless it is in a signed bay.

Like CPZs, RPZs have entry and exit signs, but the yellow lines of the RPZ are replaced by upright signs placed at regular intervals. Bays (for whatever purpose) are provided where parking and loading (and other activity) can take place and unlike CPZs, RPZs allow us to use materials in the surface of the street to 'mark out' the extent of the bay. Section 15 of Chapter 3 of the Traffic Signs Manual provides more detail.

RPZ 'repeater' sign which replaced double yellow lines and loading plate which replaced 'kerb blips' of a loading ban.

A loading bay which is marked out in a rectangle in front of the door/ windows with a loading bay sign (with arrows) at each end of the bay to show the extents.

Parking Permit Area

A relatively new idea, the PPA allows us to dispense with road markings altogether unless we need to explicitly control parking differently. The PPA essentially allows anyone with a permit to park anywhere passed a certain point which is marked with entry and exit signs. It is optional to provide repeater signs within the area and my view is it is worth providing some for clarify.

PPA entry sign.

PPA repeater sign.

The PPA is intended for self-contained areas such as cul-de-sacs or places with low through traffic, but additional bays can be provided for non-permit holders if referred on the entry signs and by marked and signed bays within. For example, we might wish to provide some pay-and-display parking in a side street subject to a PPA to serve shops on a main road which is otherwise restricted. Section 13.10 of Chapter 3 of the Traffic Signs Manual gives more information.

These three systems are obviously suited to different situations, but they are useful tools to deal with area-wide parking management. I would always advocate keeping things as simple as possible because when we don't we create doubt and as well as being potentially unfair to the driver, we run the risk of any parking tickets being overturned at appeal. We must manage parking in our urban places and it's important to have an appreciation of the different ways we can achieve the same goals.

A Curious Kerb Catch

I happened to be on Google Streetview earlier in the week undertaking a virtual site visit (a wonderful tool to use from the comfort of the office) where I came across an interesting little granite kerb detail.

The estate I was nosing around was built in the early 1900s and I happened to see a dropped kerb to serve a driveway to a garage;

I reckon it was an original installation, because the garage it serves is of the right vintage for the estate. Back in the day, dropped kerbs for driveways were quite an unusual street feature because there were few cars around and the dropped kerbs around the rest of the estate are almost certainly more recent. In terms of housing style, it may also be that the house served by the driveway predates many of the others.

So why did it catch my eye? Well put simply, the footway is kept at a constant crossfall as it passes the driveway rather than having a dip or steeper crossfall which is so often the case. It also shows thought and a high level of craftship. The 'dropped' part of the kerb line is actually tilted towards the carriageway and the kerbs flanking it are rounded to avoid a tyre-bursting point.

At some point I will get out and visit the site, but my estimate is that the kerb upstand (height above the carriageway surface) is about 60mm and the kerb width is about 300mm - this gives a slope of 1 in 5. Here's a more stylised layout;

Keeping the crossfall of the footway constant makes walking more comfortable than having to keep negotiating dips or steeper crossfalls and this especially helps people using mobility scooters and wheelchairs as well as people pushing prams.

The layout also raises another point and that's about wheelchair users wanting to cross the road away from junctions. Inclusive Mobility recommends that ramps are no steeper than 1 in 20 or 1 in 12 at the steepest and even that is going to be difficult for some manual wheelchair users. However, vehicle crossings almost always get installed with an upstand of about 25mm which is no good for the front wheels of a manual wheelchair and many powerchairs.

With a very short slope of 1 in 5 (over the width of a kerb), I wonder if this is more useful for incidental crossing of the road for wheelchair users than a 'traditional' (in fact modern) approach to vehicle crossing and perhaps there is a wider issue about the fact that we provide pedestrian dropped kerbs at junctions, but rarely provide any along streets, unless a more formal pedestrian crossing is provided. 

In side roads, it is almost always going to be vehicle crossings for informal crossing and so I would be interested in the view of wheelchair and mobility scooter users - perhaps this an an area which needs a lot more research?

How To Become A Highway Engineer

It's an interesting question for me because I didn't plan to become a highway engineer, it sort of happened; but, for what it's worth, here's how I did it because there are so many different paths you could take.

Thanks to Savage Houtkop for asking;

My journey started back in school where my favourite subjects were geography and craft, design and technology (CDT). Being the second year of GCSE, there was lots of coursework which suited my learning style of research, thinking and practical work. I did OK at GCSE overall and I had an idea that I wanted to design cars - the product design and technical drawing aspect of CDT was part of the reasoning.

I went on to A-levels to study maths and physics because that what aspiring engineers did; I also continued my love of geography to A-level. Things didn't go well and I only passed geography and got an 'N' or 'near pass'. I found the maths at A-level too abstract and I probably only did as 'well' as I did in physics because of the practical aspects.

I was at a crossroads. I wanted to carry on studying, but the mechanical engineering courses I was thinking about during A-levels suddenly became a remote possibility because of the maths and physics issue. Luckily, Hatfield Polytechnic came to the rescue. They were offering a higher national diploma (HND) in civil engineering studies and I had enough GCSEs and my A-level to get onto the course.

The HND was brilliant because there was so much practical application through the learning. Casting and smashing concrete cubes in the structures lab, setting out roads on the field behind the college, comparing drainage theory with reality in the hydraulics lab and so on. In short, we were directly applying the theory, undertaking research and learning ourselves, working in groups on practical problems and seeing how the built environment fitted together. 

I did well enough on the HND to be admitted into the second year of the civil engineering degree at what had become the University of Hertfordshire. I was admitted with quite a few of my classmates from the HND which kept the group ethos of problem solving intact. The degree was undoubtedly harder because there was a great deal more theory and the maths and physics came back to haunt me. I did OK and finished with a second class honours - bachelor of engineering to be precise.

I was now 1995 and I was in the real world and needing to get a job. Luckily for me, I had been studying during recession, but the economy had improved and through a recruitment agency I got a job as a site engineer with a telecoms contractor. The pay was awful and the hours were long. I was assigned a handful of works gangs who laid ducting for cables in the highway, built jointing chambers, bases for cabinets and other associated work. I had to make sure the work was being undertaken safely and to the contract standards as well as measuring up was was built (for invoicing).

However, there was camaraderie with colleagues (all young site engineers) and the gangs with a joint purpose of trying to get the job done. I was trained as a streetworks supervisor, learnt from those doing the hard work and there were highlights such as the site engineers regularly driving in convoy to a local cafe for the weekly fry-up and moan about the job.

I kept my eyes open and by the end of my first year with the contractor, I had secured a job as an assistant engineer with a highway authority where I would be dealing with maintenance work - mainly footway reconstruction and carriageway resurfacing. I learnt a fair bit about highway construction and materials as the highways manager was always keen to try out new methods and practices. I got involved with in-situ pavement recycling, different asphalt systems and a little bit of work to implement small traffic schemes. Some of my best memories were on-site with asphalt crews undertaking night time resurfacing because while busy, they were always pleased to show how all of the kit worked.

I loved the maintenance work, but I wanted to become professionally qualified and the type of work was never going to be of a scope which would get me there, although I did join the Institution of Highways & Transportation (now CIHT) as a member. I needed broader experience and I found a post as a civil engineer with a development company. The work exposed me to some heavy civil engineering design and construction work building roads, sewers, bridges, flood balancing ponds and perhaps most interesting of all, dealing with contaminated land with the possibility of unexploded ordnance! 

Again, I was fortunate to work with a great team and my boss also became my mentor as I prepared to sit my professional review with the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) to be admitted as a member and a chartered engineer. Part of the professional review included an interview with two ICE members and part of the interview required me to give a short presentation on some work I had been doing which was in turn based on a written submission of the same. 

Being a practical person, I made a little laminated flip chart of photos and plans of a water treatment lagoon project which I had managed. I also may have raised a couple of eyebrows when I reached into by briefcase and took out half a dozen glass jars with coloured soils and other things in them. I explained that the bright blue streaks in the soil in one of the jars was 'Blue Billy' a particularly noxious substance and the greenish lumps in another were burnt explosives. Looking back, they probably weren't items to be carried on the Tube. I also had a jar with a section of geosynthetic clay liner which is used to waterproof lagoons and landfills, complete with a rusty nail sticking through it to demonstrate its self-sealing properties. I passed in any case.

By the autumn of 2004, my wife and I were expecting our first child and so I decided to move jobs again and found a post with another highway authority a bit closer to home. I was to be undertaking traffic and highway engineering schemes as a senior engineer. Within a year of joining, my boss quit and I went for his job as a principal engineer which meant taking on staff management responsibility and a much wider area of work including development management, bridge maintenance and all sorts of highway schemes.

The work was (and is) highly varied and interesting, but with a backdrop of politics which can be very frustrating at times. In 2011 I had an epiphany - well actually, it developed over a few months. Becoming irritated with sitting in traffic following an office move from the very edge of suburbia into a town centre, I dug out my bike from the shed and became a short-distance cycle commuter. I started to wonder why on earth people would sit in traffic for short journeys (which was previously me). I then realised that I was in a minority as someone prepared to brave mixing it with motors and I became open to the idea of changing our streets to enable people to change how they travel.

Anyone who has followed me for a while knows the more recent history. I started this blog in 2012 in order to vent my frustration and in 2017, I took some tentative steps into freelancing on the side as City Infinity which has been fun. In the last couple of years, I have become increasingly fascinated by how streets and the elements within fit together and how we can make them accessible. I have also been fortunate to meet some inspirational people who have changed my view on how our streets and urban places could work better.

The future isn't written of course and I suppose I have the fun of finding out what happens next, but I'm increasingly hoping that the future will be further away from designing cars as ever.

If you are interested in becoming a highway or civil engineer, here are a couple resources;

• CIHT get qualified.
• ICE - what is civil engineering?

I think my overall message is although there are formal routes to becoming a highway or civil engineer, you don't have to follow them. We need a diverse group of people with diverse set of skills and so don't let qualifications or experience hold you back!

Dual Carriageway Terror

While I was out and about in the week, I happened to be cycling along a dual carriageway (on the path because I didn't want to become innovative jam) when I spied a gap in the central reservation barriers.

The road in question has the national speed limit and it is was patently obvious that many drivers were travelling at high speed. At least from where I was standing, sight lines across to the central reservation were poor and I did wonder if anyone ever crossed there.

The road's origins go back to the late 1920s and in fact the side road you can just see in the distance was cut in two by the road when it was built, so disrupting the network of very narrow country lanes which served the farms on the area. I have had a quick look at historic maps for the area and in the mid-1940s, the dual carriageway still formed a crossroads with the two side roads.

At some point, it was realised that having people turning right onto and from a trunk road was a bad idea and the traffic closed, but in common with countless places, we can still see a remnant of pedestrian access rights where old desire lines are kept with gaps in the barriers.

The layout of the barriers (properly known as 'safety fence' or a 'vehicle restraint system') is such that the pedestrian route means that one walks with their back to traffic in the central reservation because of the barrier overlap. If this was reversed, then it would be possible for a vehicle hitting the barriers to go through the middle.

In CIHT's 'Designing for Walking', Table 3 gives a ready reckoner on the suitability of different types of pedestrian crossing (there are clearly more detailed variables at any given site). I reproduce the first type of crossing above as it has a bearing on this case - I think you'll agree that a pair of dropped kerbs to cross a 70mph road (even in two halves) is a big ask for most people to use as a crossing. There is a DfT traffic count point nearby and the road carries some 36,000 vehicles per day - actually quieter than we might expect for a dual carriageway, but clearly still a large volume.

Looking at the foot of Table 3;

As well as being able to see what the colours mean, we learn that in this type of situation, the only appropriate choice is a bridge or an underpass. 

There is no history of pedestrian casualties at the crossing point and so unless there is ever a proactive programme of reconnecting pedestrian routes, it's unlikely this location will ever be looked at and so it will remain a quirk of history from a time where there were few cars and people would have walked between home and the farm they worked at.

So what? Well, we are still making the same mistakes as we did 90 years ago. Forever pushing for more road space, we still sever walking routes in the name of progress and once severed, they are never going to be retrofitted. For a large road building project, the costs to maintain pedestrian routes aren't costly and the engineering isn't difficult. Still, we seem to be very poor at learning from history don't we?